OSI and Hydro-Québec Enter Into a Long-term Agreement for Implementation of an Enterprise-wide OT Automation Platform for Managing Generation, Transmission, Distribution, and Outage Management Operations

MINNEAPOLIS — Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has been awarded a contract by Hydro-Québec (HQ) for the implementation of a comprehensive operational technology (OT) platform encompassing Generation Management (GMS), Transmission Management (EMS), Distribution Management (DMS), and Outage Management (OMS) solutions. This enterprise partnership between OSI and HQ encompasses the initial system implementation and deployment, as well as a 15-year evergreen support and maintenance program.

OSI’s uniform enterprise OT architecture, monarch​™, is the foundational architecture that will be used to deploy OSI’s field-proven GMS, EMS, DMS, and OMS solutions, as well as OSI's enterprise historian, CHRONUS™. This unified architecture will harmonize and replace a number of disparate legacy systems—including several GMS, EMS, and DMS/OMS—offering a modern and flexible platform to fulfill all of HQ’s OT needs for decades to come. This single architecture will offer significant benefits in terms of uniformity and flexibility of technology and maintenance across all of HQ’s asset classes while providing a resilient cyber security platform to optimally secure the utility’s production, grid operations, and distribution activities.

This project will be jointly implemented by OSI USA and OSI’s Montréal engineering and professional services teams. As part of this project, OSI will make significant investments in its new Canadian operation based in Montréal, which will serve the HQ project as well as other Canadian and international projects.

“We are enormously proud to have won the trust of Hydro-Québec to enter into this partnership and undertake this comprehensive and important project,” said OSI CEO Bahman Hoveida. “We’re confident our technology will deliver immediate and lasting benefits to Hydro-Québec’s operations, facilitating their quest to continue achieving high-performance results, reliability, operational efficiency, and grid resilience. The aligned cultural affinity both organizations have for innovation will not only benefit both parties, but will also make a positive contribution to the entire utility sector. We welcome Hydro-Québec to our user family and we look forward to a very successful, lasting partnership.”

Hydro-Québec (www.hydroquebec.com), headquartered in Montréal, generates, transmits and distributes electricity. It is Canada’s largest electricity producer, with an installed capacity of 37,300 MW, and is among the world’s largest hydropower producers. Its sole shareholder is the Québec government. Its 34,361 kilometers of transmission lines and 224,659 kilometers of distribution lines provide electricity to more than 4.3 million clients across the province of Quebec. It uses almost exclusively renewable generating options, in particular hydropower, and supports the development of other sources of energy, such as wind and biomass, through purchases from independent power producers. Its research institute, IREQ, conducts R&D in energy efficiency, energy storage, and other energy-related fields. Hydro-Québec invests $110 million in research every year.

MINNEAPOLIS — Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has been awarded a contract by Saint John Energy (SJE) to supply a new Distribution Management System (DMS) and Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) based on OSI's monarch™ operational technology (OT) platform. This will replace SJE’s legacy Survalent SCADA system and enhance their distribution grid operations.

In addition to OSI's secure and scalable SCADA platform, this new system features distribution components from OSI's DMS suite, including Network Operating Model, Conservation Voltage Reduction, and Switch Order Management. The system also includes OSI's web-based and mobile user interface; Load Management; and Integra DERMS™, OSI’s advanced solution for the integration and management of distributed energy resources.

“We look forward to working with Saint John Energy to provide innovative solutions to the community of Saint John and help them to become more engaged with their energy use,” said Sally Jacquemin, senior director of Distribution and Smart Grid at OSI.

“We look forward to working with an expert in the field and a company of OSI’s caliber,” says Ryan Mitchell, VP, Saint John Energy. “This is a critical first step in developing the framework to bring new and future smart energy projects to life. Through this partnership and others, we will be building a local entrepreneurial ecosystem and knowledge base that we can export around the world and to other utilities.”

Saint John Energy (www.sjenergy.com) has been a provider of energy to the people of Saint John since 1922. Today, Saint John Energy provides reliable services and competitive rates to more than 36,000 local customers through 13 substations spanning 316 square kilometers. Saint John Energy also provides street lighting, area lighting, more than 20,000 water heater rentals and more than 4,000 Mini Split Ductless Heat Pump rentals. In pursuit of their mission of excellence in energy solutions, they deliver value to their customers through their commitment to environmental, social and economic sustainability.

MINNEAPOLIS — Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) is pleased to announce the inauguration of its Global Engineering Center (GEC) in Bangalore, India to help with implementation and deployment of OSI projects in India, Asia, and the Middle East. This marks another major milestone in the company's steady international expansion.

OSI strongly believes in intense customer focus, pragmatism, innovation, commitment, motivation, and excellence. Designed to facilitate honest and enduring partnerships with OSI customers, the GEC will build upon the company’s core values to support growth of OSI’s international business while freeing U.S. resources to concentrate primarily on North America-, Europe-, and Australia/New Zealand-based projects.

“We are very excited about the expansion of our operations in India to achieve a true ‘GLOCAL’ (Global Technology and Local Engineering and Implementation) organization,” said Bharath Kumar, managing director of OSI. “We believe utilities globally are facing the same challenges as our clients in North America, so we are pleased to be able to deliver our superior technology and services while being closer to our end customers.”

Staffed by experienced, multidisciplinary technical teams, the GEC will deliver OSI's leading-edge operational technology (OT) platforms and solutions to new clients throughout the region while also providing local support in keeping with OSI's tradition of high-quality project delivery and superior customer service.

“The establishment of the Global Engineering Center represents another step in OSI India’s continued journey along a steady trajectory of growth and development. Our global vision is based on hard work, open communication, a strong emphasis on teamwork, and a high level of responsibility,” said Thyagaraj Ramachandran, director of international operations, OSI India.

Australia’s TasNetworks Selects OSI Technology for a New Distribution Management System

MINNEAPOLIS—Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has been awarded a contract by TasNetworks for a new Distribution Management System (DMS) based on OSI's monarch™ operational technology (OT) platform and delivered on OSI’s unified OpenXphere™ platform. TasNetworks has relied on OSI’s SCADA/EMS technology for years, and this fully virtualized DMS will integrate seamlessly with their existing system, providing invaluable, modernized tools to efficiently monitor and control the distribution resources on their network.

The new system will include natively integrated DMS components including Distribution Network Operating Model; Distribution Power Flow; Fault Location, Isolation, and System Restoration; and Switch Order Management. It will also feature OSI's web-based real-time graphical viewer to support remote users.

“We have used OSI technology for transmission management (EMS) for many years,” said Michael Westenberg, general manager of technology and performance at TasNetworks. “The addition of OSI’s advanced DMS applications enables us to improve efficiency and service reliability for our customers.”

“Australia has been a rapidly growing market for OSI and we are excited to expand our technology platform at TasNetworks to include distribution in addition to transmission,” said Dan Candotti, senior director of utilities at OSI’s Australia office. “Supporting transmission and distribution systems on a unified technology platform is at the core of OSI’s OpenXphere solution for enterprise-wide operations technology.”

TasNetworks (www.tasnetworks.com.au) is a Tasmanian state-owned corporation that supplies power from the generation source to homes and businesses through a network of transmission towers, substations, and powerlines. The company formed on 1 July, 2014 following a merger between Aurora Energy’s distribution network and Transend Networks. They own, operate, and maintain 3,564km of transmission lines and underground cables, and 22,400km of distribution overhead lines and underground cables.

Products

monarch™

A state-of-the-art open system architecture designed for unequaled portability, monarch is available on various high-performance hardware and operating system platforms....
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It is an extensible architecture that scales well from smaller applications to very large distributed network systems. The monarch architecture meets the key criteria for a truly open system: It supports multiple choices in terms of hardware, operating system, virtualization and database platforms, and is expandable, upgradeable and maintainable to the highest degree possible. Key features supported by the monarch platform are:

Historian solutions on the market may not meet all users' needs. These solutions are not designed to support an exponential increase in data; are based on traditional, rigid database technology; and have limited platform support. CHRONUS is a comprehensive data historian platform for high-fidelity archival of time series data.

Why Big Data Technology?

Proven Big Data/NoSQL database

Cluster friendly

Fault tolerant on low-range hardware or Cloud infrastructure

Supports fast data replication across multiple data centers

Scales with no loss in performance - linear scaling from 1 processor node to many nodes

OSI’s Integra™ DERMS is built on OSI's monarch™ platform and is an ideal platform for real-time monitoring, management and optimal dispatch of distributed energy resources including renewable generation, energy storage, electric vehicles, backup generators, and demand response. Integra DERMS enables utilities to manage and operate the increasing number and types of distributed energy and demand response resources.

Integra DERMS supports the following functionality:

Modelling of DERs

DER aggregation

Visualization of DERs

Monitoring and controlling DERsv

DER Forecasting

Scheduling and Dispatching of DERs

Data archives including post data analysis and reporting

Study mode functions

DERMS Simulator

Integra DERMS leverages the various DER resources to improve performance at the local and/or system level. It coordinates DER dispatch with traditional distribution grid assets, and permits their participation in bulk energy markets. Advanced DER forecasting and state estimation provide situational awareness even including the many DER devices that are not telemetered.

OSI's Integra DERMS seamlessly integrates with Spectra DMS to deliver geospatial information on the various DER types and available capacities. Additionally, through DMS integration, the latest DER forecasts and operating conditions can be used in functions like Volt/Var Control; Fault Location, Isolation & Service Restoration; and Feeder Reconfiguration.

With Integra DERMS, you can transform DERs from potentially problematic devices to some of your strongest assets as you build into the Utility of the Future.

OSI ADMS is a real-time integrated solution for the active management of distribution networks. OSI ADMS enables utilities to improve system reliability, efficiency and safety, as well as provide timely and reliable information to internal and external stakeholders. Incorporating a full suite of advanced applications, OSI ADMS represents a comprehensive and modern solution for the challenges facing today’s distribution system operators while being built on a robust real-time platform for the utility’s future roadmap and vision.

The OSI ADMS product suite is built upon OSI’s trusted monarch™ (Multiplatform Open Network ARCHitecture) smart grid platform, is comprised of a real-time operational model of the distribution system (Spectra eMap™), a full suite of next-generation distribution management system applications (Spectra DMS™), a comprehensive set of outage analysis and operations work management functions (Electra OMS™), and an integrated set of capabilities for managing, controlling, and optimizing Distributed Energy Resources (Integra DERMS™).

With these integrated components and a single “pane of glass” view of the distribution system, OSI ADMS enables distribution operators to monitor the performance of the distribution system, allowing them to anticipate and respond to potential faults, overloading, and voltage quality situations with the best solutions, before they become critical.

OSI ADMS enables distribution operators to:

Model and manage the distribution network

Monitor and control various aspects of the power system

Manage planned and unplanned outages

Dispatch the optimal crew to the job

Create and safely execute switching orders

Integrate renewable and distributed generation

Analyze and optimize the operation of the network

OSI ADMS encompasses a complete and integrated set of functions and applications that operate on a common network model and are accessible through a common and seamless user-interface with a standardized look-and-feel. monarch™ is OSI’s flagship automation platform. OSI ADMS is built on this platform, taking advantage of its field-proven stability, real-time performance and industry acclaimed pedigree. OSI ADMS inherits from monarch, support for distributed client/server architecture, with data capable of residing on multiple host servers, including various distributions of UNIX®, Linux® and Windows®.

OSI Compass is a next-generation, state-of-the-art operations mobility platform that incorporates the latest in mobile technology for field crew work automation, extending distribution operations management functions to the field.

OSI Compass is fully integrated with OSI's ADMS for a complete enterprise solution, providing utilities with a mobile solution that enables them to efficiently and effectively assign work to field technicians and to improve utilization and productivity.

OSI Compass allows utility field crews to:

Remain in constant communication with the operations dispatcher/operator and be an integrated part of the operations workflow

Become quickly aware of which customers have lost power by confirming outages in the field

Pinpoint storm damage locations and quickly assess damage

Receive accurate network operational state in the field

Document each step of work execution in the field as the job is worked and closely monitor progress

Receive and execute switching plans directly in the field

OSI Compass provides access to real-time outage and asset information using an intuitive interface that includes highly configurable displays.

Highlights of OSI Compass include:

Ability to easily recognize field devices

Flexible and efficient user interface design

Support for both online and offline environments

Use of mobile devices’ GPS to determine crew location in the field

Support for both audio and visual notifications

Support for mobile operating systems including Microsoft Windows, iOS, and Android

Support for touch-based devices and applications native to the device such as camera, microphone for voice-to-text, and navigation tools

Support for different types of users across the utility with various responsibilities, including mutual-aid users

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